There’s poop in our chicken and the government doesn’t care, doctors’ group alleges

When it comes to inspecting poop in chicken products, the government doesn’t give a s--t, a new lawsuit claims.

A nonprofit doctors’ group accused the U.S. Department of Agriculture this week of ignoring its warnings about fecal contamination of chicken and other products and misleading consumers, who the group said would be “horrified” to learn how much fecal matter they eat.

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The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, argues the government’s “zero tolerance” policy for fecal contamination only applies to visible matter, allowing feces that is not visible to the naked eye to pass inspections.

The suit comes six years after the group, comprised of 12,000 doctors, filed a petition asking the department to require the industry to disclose the presence of feces on chicken and other meat products. The government has not responded to the petition, the group said.

The nonprofit claims that products deemed “wholesome” by the agriculture department would be considered “disgusting” by the average consumer.

“USDA misleads consumers every time inspectors slap a ‘wholesome’ label on contaminated food,” Deborah Press, a lawyer for the group, said in a statement. “Consumers should be horrified to know that USDA’s standard for wholesomeness is ‘no visible feces.’ ”

As part of the chicken slaughtering process, carcasses are typically soaked in cold water for up to an hour before being packaged for consumers, according to the statement, which describes a training video the group obtained in 2013 through a Freedom of Information Act request.

“We often see birds going down the line with intestines still attached, which are full of fecal contamination,” a federal inspector quoted in the petition and lawsuit said. “If there is no fecal contamination on the bird’s skin, however, we can do nothing to stop that bird from going down that line.”

Once the bird gets into the water tank, the inspector said, the feces contaminate the other carcasses, creating a “fecal soup.”

The Department of Agriculture did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday afternoon, but an agency spokeswoman told CNN the government has a “zero tolerance policy for fecal material on meat and poultry."

The department created a new inspection system in 2014 that increased slaughter and processing line speeds to up to 175 birds per minute. Data show that plants operating under the new model are more likely to fail safety standards for salmonella.